


Sunlight and Water

by cassieoh_draws (cassieoh), the_moonmoth



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Aziraphale is a Little Shit (Good Omens), Collaboration, Drunken Flirting, Fanart, Historical, Illustrations, M/M, Noah's Ark, Post-Canon, Protective Crowley, Scene: Paris 1793 (Good Omens), illustrated fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:34:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21525292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassieoh/pseuds/cassieoh_draws, https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_moonmoth/pseuds/the_moonmoth
Summary: What if Aziraphale were a flirty drunk?An art and fic collaboration.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 251
Kudos: 1604





	Sunlight and Water

**Author's Note:**

> "Wine is sunlight, held together by water."  
> \-- Galileo Galilei
> 
>  **Author's notes:** I made [this post on tumblr](https://themoonmothwrites.tumblr.com/post/189258314753/so-heres-a-thought-what-if-aziraphales-a-flirty) a few days ago, and cassieoh casually mentioned she was going to draw something for it, so I was like, cool, then I'll write something in actual prose to go with it. The smallest of reverse bangs, she called it. Then, about a thousand more people weighed in. And _then_ cassieoh sent me a goddamn two-page _comic_. From that point on, it has been a spiral of co-enablement and I regret nothing ;) 
> 
> Beta thanks also to cassieoh, because she isn't content to just be wonderful at one thing.

**Sunlight and Water**

The first time it happened was on the Ark. 

Crawly had tried to sneak on board under cover of night to escape the rising waters, and been almost immediately discovered by Aziraphale. He was soaking wet, sprawled inelegantly on the deck, pretty defenseless all things considered, but Aziraphale magnanimously decided to hold off on the smiting on account of having had quite enough of death in the last few hours, even if Crawly’s demise wouldn’t be permanent. He did, however, give him a righteous ticking off, but tender mercies and all that. 

When he was done listing all the reasons Crawly being on board was a terrible idea, Crawly looked up at him from his exhausted heap of robes and feathers, and said, “Don’t let anyone know I’m here, don’t interfere with the ineffable bloody plan, got it. _Tell me there’s booze on board.”_

Humans had invented alcohol almost as soon as they'd invented leisure time, which was to say a scant few hundred years after the Beginning, and both Crawly and Aziraphale had quickly developed an enduring fondess for the substance, but the Ark was the first time they drank together. Really, in retrospect, it was amazing it had taken so long, but they didn’t run into each other terribly often in those days and were still some centuries away from being completely at ease in each other’s company, or so Crawly thought at the time. In fact, it only took half a clay jar of wine for the angel to loosen up, talking freely and excitedly about this new thing the humans were doing, called _writing,_ his rigid posture starting to become lax, his cheeks flushing a very fetching pink, hands moving emphatically and eyes warm with enthusiasm. By the time the jar was empty, Aziraphale was actually slouching, loose-limbed and relaxed at Crawly’s side as they leaned against a bulkhead in the belly of the ship, one knee drawn up, one wrist balanced loosely atop it.

“And do you know,” Aziraphale was saying, fingers flicking with lazy emphasis, “they don’t just write about things that have _really_ happened, or that they think are _going_ to happen. Sometimes, sometimes they write about things that haven’t happened at all! It’s that imagination thing She gave them. It’s really quite amazing.”

“Clever buggers, humans,” Crawly agreed. He was sitting with his cheek resting on his own updrawn knee, finally dry and pleasantly warm, and the alcohol and mildly sozzled angel before him were making him feel… something he wasn’t sure he should be feeling. Captivated. Welcome, almost.

“Oh, yes. Quite.” Aziraphale leaned close, lowering his voice conspiratorially. “Some of their imaginings can be quite… racy.”

“Angel!” said Crawly, surprised and delighted. “Are you saying you’ve been _reading_ their sexual fantasies?”

“I’m not saying anything of the sort,” Aziraphale said, but he was smiling a little, almost a smirk really, eyes dancing, face _glowing._ When he poked Crawly in the chest, reprimanding him for the shocking aspersions being cast on Aziraphale’s spotless character, he very noticeably let his fingertips linger there, drawing tiny, maddening circles just a whisper of linen away from Crawly’s suddenly heated skin.

He was delightful like that, tempting Crawly so unabashedly in that not-quite-conscious (though not fully _unconscious)_ way, the little touches, the drag of his fingers across Crawly’s knee, the back of his hand, that when the sun finally rose and they were forced to sober up and part ways, Crawly was loath to let him go.

*

The second time it happened, they were in Babylon, both sent there for work but with no indication yet of what that work might be. They had a lot of free time, was the point, and they spent many of their evenings together enjoying the local delicacies, to say nothing of the local vintages (night time felt safer than day, somehow, although it logically didn’t make a difference to any occult or ethereal eyes turned their way. Aziraphale was more obvious about his skittishness over their meeting like that, but Crawly felt it too, the way his stomach skipped with illicit thrill. Somehow they ended up together anyway.)

After several months in close quarters on the Ark, with very little to do but drink and talk, Crawly had become used to Aziraphale’s ways, the cycle he needed to pass through before he acquiesced to the thing he actually wanted in the first place. First was the outright denial, then came the holier-than-thou reaffirmation of their respective roles, at which point Crawly would find some way to re-word his suggestion to make it more palatable, which Aziraphale would follow up with a weakening in resolve that eventually led to sitting across from each other in some tavern or restaurant, getting slowly but thoroughly pissed together. And the funny thing was, the really funny thing was, as soon as he got some alcohol in him, all of the resistance, all of the _oh no I couldn’t possibly_ -ness of him, disappeared like a puff of wind and he became, to Crowley’s unending glee, an outrageous flirt.

“Really, my dear,” Aziraphale tsked as Crawly told him about his latest temptation, but he had the pink-cheeked, sparkling-eyed quality that meant he was starting to be tipsy enough to put a sheen of good humour over everything.

“Come on, angel, don’t tell me you’re not impressed,” Crawly said, grinning.

“But dear fellow-- a _priest_.”

“That’s what makes it worth the work,” Crawly said, smirking. “It might be years’ worth of effort, but the pious ones are always the most satisfying.”

Aziraphale looked up at him through his lashes, trying for scandalised but coming off, somehow, amused. 

“Outrageous,” he scolded, but he said it while tucking a strand of Crawly’s long hair away from his face, fingers brushing his cheek, the shell of his ear, and Crawly completely lost his train of thought.

And that was another thing Crawly had come to learn about him on the Ark -- that look in his eye, the exact amount of wine it took to put it there, and the awareness that when it appeared he’d better watch out for a hand up his tunic. It had been funny on the Ark, hilarious even, that this prim and proper angel who would fluster at the drop of a hat in the light of day, would giggle madly into Crawly’s shoulder while drunk, as they got into a good-natured slap-fight over where exactly his hands could be.

It wasn’t so funny in Babylon. 

Partly that was down to Gabriel’s newfound propensity to pop in unannounced, leaving them both on edge and with the constant low-grade buzz of worry at getting caught (Crawly had almost run into the wanker himself, once, and once was enough, though to go by Aziraphale’s complaints it was rather more regularly than that on his end). And partly it was down to that one time they’d passed out together on Crawly’s sleeping pallet when they’d retired there after being shooed out of a tavern, and Crawly had woken to a shaft of piercing light in his face, bleary and horribly hung over, and looked across to see Aziraphale still out for the count, cheek all smooshed up where he was lying, hair a complete disaster, absolutely fucking touchable, and Crawly stared at his face and thought, _oh no._

*

The one hundredth time it happened, Crowley was travelling along the northern coast of the Black Sea on his way back to Europe from a decades’-long jaunt in China, when he sensed Aziraphale was nearby. It was a wedding, Vladimir Svętoslavič, Grand Prince of Kiev, to the Byzantine Imperial Princess Anna, but more to the point, it was the official conversion of the ruler of the Kievan Rus’ to Christianity, and Aziraphale was flush with his success and the approval of his superiors.

“Gabriel actually said I’d done well,” he said, glowing. “Patted me on the shoulder and everything. Said there would be a commendation in the works.”

“Good for you,” Crowley said, with both an eye-roll and no small measure of affection.

They drank fortified _kvass_ unobserved at the edges of the banquet hall, and Crowley let Aziraphale’s eager chatter wash over him -- the architecture he’d inspired, the unity and peace Prince Vladimir had brought to the region. Crowley watched and listened and tried not to smile too hard, too obviously, and took every opportunity to point out how the common people would suffer with the tax hikes for the new churches to be built, and how unlikely dear old Vovochka was to keep his truly enormous army to himself.

“But enough of that,” Aziraphale finally said, when he was done warding off Crowley’s spirited teasing. He put his hand on Crowley’s shoulder, a little too close to his neck to be truly companionable. “What about you? Where have you been all this time?”

“Did you miss me, angel?” Crowley asked. Aziraphale tugged a lock of hair in playful reproach, and a cascade of pleasurable sensation shot across Crowley’s scalp.

“Don’t be absurd,” Aziraphale said, smiling ever so slightly. “We’re enemies.”

“You sure about that?” Crowley asked. “Seems to me we’ve spent most of the last 500 years cancelling each other out in various climates.”

“ _You_ are a demon,” Aziraphale began.

“Yes. Yes,” Crowley interrupted. “But I’m a demon with some truly spectacular scrolls that _no one else has seen_ this side of the Argun river.”

Aziraphale’s expression became almost lustful. Crowley swallowed.

And that was how they ended up in Aziraphale’s tower room, dark blue sky and twinkling stars visible through the narrow window, stone stove sending out decadent, radiant warmth into the frostbitten room.

“Here,” Aziraphale said, holding out a truly sumptuous fur to Crowley. Before he could take it, Aziraphale stepped forward and wrapped it around Crowley’s shoulders himself. He held the ends of it just beneath Crowley’s throat, breath forming little white puffs in the cold air, and Crowley was caught by his nearness. And then Aziraphale let his hands fall, the weight of the fur keeping it secure across Crowley’s shoulders as Aziraphale allowed his hands to trail down his chest, his quaking stomach, around his hips-- Crowley was just about to mindlessly step into the embrace when Aziraphale withdrew with a triumphant “Ah ha!” and Crowley realised he’d managed to get the knapsack he had slung across his body open and a scroll removed while Crowley was most efficiently distracted.

“You bastard,” he said, impressed. Aziraphale merely gave him a disapproving cluck of his tongue even as his lips curled into an impish smirk, attention already mostly on the scroll. “Are you sure you don’t want to come to some sort of work arrangement?” Crowley said faintly. “You’d be really bloody good at it.”

*

Crowley had lost count by the time the French Revolution rolled around, which-- honestly he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not. They went for _crêpes au beurre_ and drank _cidre chaud_ from little ceramic cups, and when it was time to leave, Aziraphale took Crowley’s arm to keep himself upright (it had been a rather long, leisurely lunch, which had in fact run into dinner, and the cider crept up on you somehow).

They wove their way down the dark Parisian streets, talking too loudly and shushing each other, miraculously unmolested by any revolutionaries, until Aziraphale stumbled harder than Crowley could compensate for and they careened into a brick wall.

It wasn’t until he was pressed bodily against the bricks by one very warm angel that it occurred to Crowley’s booze-soaked brain that Aziraphale had done it on purpose.

“Really, angel? Here?” It wasn’t the _most_ disgusting alley he’d ever been in, but given that public sanitation had gone out with the Romans, that wasn’t saying much.

“You have no idea how good you look,” Aziraphale breathed, hands doing something very busy in the vicinity of Crowley’s stomach. Crowley did, in fact, have some idea, as Aziraphale had been looking at him like he wanted to eat him since he’d first appeared in the Bastille (that was… unusual, to say the least, and certainly unprecedented while sober, but the angel had clearly got caught up in the social mores of the times, which were somewhat-- how had he put it, all those years ago? Racy. What other explanation was there for wearing those pink satin shoes? The absolute tart.)

“Uhhhh, be that as it may,” he said, reaching for Aziraphale’s hands in an attempt to divert them. “You know I can’t--” 

The noise he made then was… undignified. Because Aziraphale had pinned his wrists to the wall to stop him from interfering, and when he had a mind to be, Aziraphale was _strong._

“You can’t?” he said teasingly, the breath against crowley’s ear a study in temptation. He could teach entire seminars in Hell on that breath, Crowley thought, on the way the sweet smell of cider mingled with the chill night air, and the divine scent of Aziraphale’s skin. The invitation of it.

“I have to hand it to you,” Crowley said a little breathlessly. “This is all very sordid. I must be rubbing off on you.”

“Oh do be quiet,” Aziraphale said, brisk tone promptly defeated by the way he raked Crowley with his eyes, so intimately that Crowley felt it like a physical thing, though his voice was still devastatingly prim when he said, “You only wish you were rubbing off on me.”

Crowley spluttered, but there were no words in his brain to make it to his mouth. Probably because of how close Aziraphale was now, so close they were touching almost everywhere, so close that Aziraphale’s nose nudged curiously at his own. Crowley’s heart was racing, his body was too hot, and Aziraphale was gleaming in the moonlight, flushed and just rumpled enough to look as though he’d like to be even moreso.

Releasing Crowley’s wrists, he reached up and removed his sunglasses (slowly enough that Crowley could object if he wanted to, though in that moment he couldn’t think of a single reason why he would). 

“There you are,” Aziraphale said quietly.

“I don’t know where you think I could go when you’re holding me down,” Crowley said, his voice raspy and telltale. Aziraphale glanced up at him, that beautiful, coy, suggestive look that Crowley had been seeing in his dreams for millennia now.

“I’m not holding you down now,” he said. “I rather need my hands. Oh, but perhaps I could…”

He pushed his knee between Crowley’s thighs and Crowley made a strangled sound and let his head thunk back against the wall. Then Aziraphale’s hands were at his stomach once more, where it turned out that what he had been busy doing before was loosening buttons and ties, so that he could now slip a hand beneath Crowley’s layers to caress bare skin.

Crowley gasped, a loud, convulsive thing.

“Angel,” he murmured. Crowley couldn’t look away from his eyes. The hand that wasn’t touching his stomach crept up his chest to hook around his neck, and Aziraphale was leaning impossibly close, and Crowley licked his lips and…

Put his hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders and…

Stopped him.

And the angel… the angel _pouted_.

"Aziraphale," he moaned. "You're killing me."

"Well, I certainly had hoped for some sort of death. Maybe just a little one."

"Gnah!"

Crowley wanted to let him. He desperately wanted to let him. To tilt his head back against the rough bricks as Aziraphale pressed his mouth to Crowley’s throat, to feel his own heartbeat between Aziraphale’s teeth. But he couldn't. He knew (or, he strongly suspected, which was as good as knowing for two beings who’d known each other as long as they had) that Aziraphale had got himself locked up earlier on purpose. Just as he’d trapped Crowley down this dark alley against this wall on purpose. And Crowley… Crowley understood the ritual of the thing. Crowley’s role was to save him. Crowley’s role was to _be safe_. This was just another way his silly, wonderful angel needed saving from himself; just another way he was trusting Crowley to protect him. And so Crowley would make this safe for him. 

He wouldn't ever take that away.

*

After the Ritz, Crowley wasn't even thinking about it. He was so tired he'd come out the other side of his exhaustion with a buzzing, relaxed contentment. They'd survived, they'd _succeeded_ , and now they were free (or as free as the humans were, which was considerably more free than they had been before). Crowley's insides were full of sunlight and calm waters. That, and champagne. 

He was so goddamn _happy._

So when Aziraphale invited him back to the bookshop to "Continue our celebrations, my dear," when he appeared with a couple of perfectly chilled bottles from his underground wine cellar (one that did not show up on any blueprints or records of planning permission, but which existed nevertheless), when he took off his jacket and loosened his bowtie -- Crowley didn't think anything of it. His intense love for Aziraphale encompassed a healthy dose of platonic friendship, one he had carefully kept at the forefront of his heart for longer than was probably sane (though absolutely necessary for everyone's safety) and he had no thoughts beyond simply basking in Aziraphale's company without either of them having to look over their shoulders for the first time in the history of the world. It was an astonishing, giddying thought.

Besides, maybe stripping down to his waistcoat and shirtsleeves was Aziraphale's way of giving the finger to his former bosses as he walked irreversibly away from them. As he walked towards Crowley. If that were the case, then Crowley was all for it.

Even so, he couldn't help poking a little fun.

"Feeling casual tonight, are we?" he asked, eyebrows innocently raised, as Aziraphale passed a champagne flute down to where he was sprawling on the sofa.

"Do you know, I rather think I am. Perhaps it's time for a change, start of a new era and all. Perhaps I should try something more modern," Aziraphale said, taking his usual seat in the armchair. His eyes lit up with the glee of a celestial being who's just had an idea that he's drunkenly mistaken for good. "Perhaps I should try some _jeans."_

"Wha-- whe-- Steady on now," Crowley said.

"What, you think I couldn't carry it off?" he asked, still with that damnable twinkle in his eye. "Or do you think I might carry it off _too well._ ”

And oh, there it was. Crowley had been quite slow on the uptake this time, but he saw it now, the look Aziraphale got, the one that Crowley had learned instinctively to look out for. _Here we go_ , he thought, a little weary but infinitely fond. Let the trollied angel do his worst, really-- nothing could bring Crowley down tonight.

"Crowley?" Aziraphale asked, frowning lightly. "Are you all right, dear?"

"Yeah," he said, throwing a small smile back as he twiddled the stem of his wineglass. "'m fine. Just thinking."

"What about?"

"How long we've known each other."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. It's been a long bloody time."

Aziraphale smiled softly. "I suppose it has."

"And in all that time, angel," Crowley said. "I don't think I've ever... seen you in anything even approaching casual wear."

Aziraphale laughed, the kind of laugh that rolled out of him like a peal of church bells, helplessly, as though he hadn't been expecting it.

"I've gone completely nude a number of times," he said, still mirthful. "Nothing more casual than that, dear boy. The Greeks and Romans really weren’t much for clothing. The Scandinavians still aren’t. And have you ever _been_ on German beach in the summertime?"

"Well there you go, then, that solves it!" Crowley said, throwing an arm up dramatically. "No need to go shopping, just strip off in the middle of Oxford Street, start a new trend. You could become a new anti-capitalist icon."

It was a dangerous thing to say when Aziraphale was Like This, and Crowley only realised it a moment later when Aziraphale, still holding his gaze, reached down and began to unbutton his waistcoat.

"Well, if you insist. I suppose there are certain advantages to being insusceptible to cold," he said, trying and largely failing to hold back his amusement at Crowley's strangled, inarticulate noises.

Thankfully, he stopped once the buttons were all undone, though frankly it left _Crowley_ feeling quite undone himself, the sight of Aziraphale's bare neck and gaping waistcoat, the neat little row of pearly white buttons on the pale blue shirt beneath. They were doing strange things to his ability to look elsewhere.

“Speaking of!” Crowley finally managed to pry the words out of his mouth. “Why _exactly_ did you feel the need to undress my body in front of the Hordes of Hell?”

“Don’t be so prudish, my dear,” Aziraphale laughed, but the subject change had worked, and he launched into another animated retelling of the heroic exploits of the morning.

Some time later, halfway into a second bottle of champagne, Aziraphale got up to refill their glasses, disappearing into the kitchen for a moment for some muttered reason that Crowley didn’t quite catch, and when he returned, the waistcoat was gone and he’d rolled up his sleeves to boot. It was like being subjected to the world’s slowest strip tease, and Crowley didn’t know how to feel about it. Even though Aziraphale was correct in that they had both seen each other completely naked in public baths and spas, in places and times where that kind of thing was acceptable, somehow now the sight of Aziraphale’s forearms, the dusting of hair there, the vulnerable knob of bone at the wrist, was incendiary. 

He wondered distantly if it was time for him to leave yet.

He stopped wondering when Aziraphale sat beside him on the couch instead of going back to his chair. Not because he’d obtained some kind of answer, but because he stopped being capable of higher thought altogether.

“Is this all right?” Aziraphale asked.

Crowley stared at him a moment, trying to figure out why in the hell he was _asking_ , then gave up and simply nodded.

“Good,” Aziraphale said softly, arranging himself more comfortably with an elbow propped on the back of the sofa, head resting in his hand. “I do so like to be close to you.”

Crowley looked away out of self-preservation and drained his glass, something he regretted a moment later when Aziraphale leaned into him and said, “Here, let me take that,” and put the empty flute on the coffee table beside his own still-full one. It left the ragged energy in Crowley’s fingers raw and exposed.

“‘S a good vintage,” he said stupidly. “Not too sweet.”

“I’m glad you like it,” Aziraphale said, his breath a warm puff of air against Crowley’s ear. Crowley squeezed his eyes closed for a moment, trying to brace against the sharp swell of sensation, and that was a mistake too, because Aziraphale took the opportunity to put his hand on Crowley’s thigh, a warm, steady weight, and leaned in even further until -- _oh god_ \-- he was nosing softly at Crowley’s jaw, his tattoo.

“Do you remember staying at that little chateau just outside Reims?” Aziraphale murmured, breath ghosting warmly over Crowley’s skin, raising goosebumps. “16-- oh what was it? 43? 44?”

“1648,” Crowley said, voice catching, hands clenching uselessly at his sides. “Charles II.”

“That’s right. Everywhere you looked there was civil war, but that chateau had those beautiful vineyards and it was like a little oasis.” Aziraphale’s touch on his thigh was like molten iron, Crowley was going to be feeling its shadow for days. “I’ve been saving these bottles ever since. For a special occasion.”

He pulled back then, and Crowley forced himself to hold in the whine at the withdrawal of his warmth, but it didn’t last long. A moment later, Aziraphale had moved to straddle him. Suddenly, Crowley had a lapful of angel and all he could do was stare up at him dumbly.

“It’s very lucky, really,” Aziraphale continued, reaching up to cup Crowley’s face in both hands, stroking tenderly with his thumbs. 

“Lucky?” Crowley rasped.

“That Adam reconstituted them. I can’t imagine they’d have survived the fire.”

“Yeah, prob-probably not.”

Crowley licked his dry lips, utterly captivated as he always was. Aziraphale’s eyes were bright with desire and Crowley felt it like a gravitational pull, the long, decaying orbit of their relationship. Carefully, slowly, Aziraphale removed his sunglasses, the second time he had ever done so.

“Is this all right?” he asked again, and again Crowley could only nod. Aziraphale smiled down at him, so incredibly, radiantly beautiful. Crowley was full of light; Aziraphale was giving it off like a small star. Putting his hands back on Crowley’s cheeks, Aziraphale leaned into him.

Crowley’s hand was in the centre of his chest. 

He didn’t remember deciding to do that, didn’t know when it had happened. But his hand was in the centre of Aziraphale’s chest and it was holding Aziraphale back, and Crowley looked up at him helplessly, trying to find the words to remind him: this isn’t safe, you aren’t ready to take this risk yet.

“You’re drunk, angel,” he said, ruinous voice crumbling away to a whisper. “You-- you know we can’t--”

“I’m not, actually,” Aziraphale said quietly. “I sobered up a few minutes ago, in the kitchen.”

“You what?” Crowley said dumbly.

“And we can, you know,” Aziraphale continued. “You did so well, Crowley, and I admit I was sometimes reckless. I wanted you so badly. You protected us both so magnificently, but darling, we’re free now, that’s over with. I-- I’m ready for you to stop.”

“Oh,” Crowley said. Aziraphale held his eyes unabashedly and leaned his weight into Crowley’s hand until slowly, slowly, Crowley let his arm go slack, let Aziraphale trap his hand between them, fingers and bones and flesh and two racing heartbeats.

He didn’t know kissing could be like this, didn’t know it could be done with your whole heart, your whole body. Aziraphale cradled Crowley’s head in his hands and poured himself into Crowley, and Crowley was gone, he was done, he abandoned himself utterly to Aziraphale.

There was an earthquake, the mantle shifted, and all that sunlight, he couldn't hold it in. 

"I love you,” he gasped between kisses. “I love you. Aziraphale, I love you so much.”

"I know," Aziraphale said softly, stroking his hair back from his forehead, kissing him again. "I love you, too. My darling. My sweet love."

Crowley's hand slipped away, found a soft landing on Aziraphale's thigh, and Aziraphale leaned close, close, and kissed him again.

  



End file.
